I have to say, when I first drank beer. I didn't like the taste. In fact it is surprised me how nasty it tasted. Over the years, I have developed a taste for it. I like flavored beers like blue moon and hornsbys a lot. But I also enjoys many other good beers.

Brewing beer
My friend gave me a beer brewing kit. It included everything to brew your own beer. The 2 can mix was a Muntons Gold 40 pint beerkit. This is a continental pilsner with and estimated alcohol content of approx 4.5%. The bottom of the box had an expiration date of 12-31-04 so I'm not sure how it'll taste, but no sense in wasting. I just made sure to buy a new batch of yeast. The yeast was 11g of brewing yeast called "Nottingham" which is GMO and Gulten free.

Brewing beer is not a hard thing to do. It is a chemistry experiment and I will be drinking the results so extreme care was taken to ensure no contamination. It is just a few steps for the entire process. Waiting for the water to boil is where most of your time is spent. Sanitizing and cleanup is a large time sink as well.

Gravity Measurements
Dec-29th 5pm
Orginal gravity: 1.060
Jan-12th 12:30pm
Gravity reading #1: 1.014
Jan-30th 7:00pm
Final Gravity reading: 1.013
Now that I have the final gravity, I can calculate the numbers on chol content...

Starting

Apparent Final

Real Final

Specific Gravity

1.06

1.013

1.021

Degrees Plato

14.77

3.35

5.41

Alcohol % (wt/wt)

Alcohol % (vol/vol)

kcals (12 oz serving)

4.9

6.13

198

I decided to timelapse the yeast doing their thang. Should result in some neato results. I will post them when I process the em.

Project Update - Jan-12-2008
A big thank you to Karl Landmeier. I would not have even tried this project if it weren't for Karl. He pretty much walked me through each step. Making it easy. Thank you!

I'm excited to see what it is going to taste like when it is done. Today it tasted with a sweet taste. It was flat, but this is to be expected with a fermenting beer. We are going to let it sit for a bit longer.

Project Update - Jan-30-2008
The beer project comes to a close! We bottled all 46 bottles of the brew today. The beer tasted much better, much less sweet. It now tasted more like something that you'd actually buy. Though the beer was still warm and flat. I think the carbonation is going to make it taste much better.

Beer bottling does take some time to do just because you've got to carefully sanitize everything (each bottle/gear). I also thought the beer filler wand I got was really neat. You fill bottles by depressing the wand within the bottle. When you pull the wand out of the bottle, it gives you the correct head space. Very simple and cool.